$20 million needed for the "Better CVS" Initiative

Ayn Rand said in "Atlas Shrugged" that any man must make a choice
between upholding freedom, life and not defaulting on logic or reason,
or between succumbing to irrationality. Similarly in the free software
world one must make a choice of holding on to their free software ideals.

I used to think of myself as an "in for free beer" kind of guy. Use it,
whether it is free or not. Code. Distribute. Be happy. I still feel no
guilt feelings or remorse for using proprietary software. Prominent
examples include: Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, WinZip,
CoolEdit, PaintShop Pro, xv, Matlab, Borland C++, Delphi, Eudora, and the
list goes on. I would not hesitate before using them again. But I also
know there should be a choice between free software and proprietary
software, and that the free alternative should eventually be up to par
if not better than the proprietary one.

We all agree that CVS and Perforce are OK as far as source control
management systems are concerned. We all agree that ClearCase is very
powerful but has become bloated, and practically Consultingware.

We need a better source control system. And we need it as free software.
Using a proprietary source control system for open-source projects is
unthinkable. It is ridiculus as claiming that gcc can be proprietary or
that the Linux and BSDs kernels should be closed-source, or that Perl
, Python or Ruby should be proprietary languages. The reason is that
source control is a meta-hack: something developers depend on to write good
code. As such, it should essentially be free software.

Luckily for us there are at least three alternatives out there that are
better than CVS (albeit doubtedly not as good as the commercial state
of the art):

1. Aegis - Aegis was created by Peter Miller, a superb UNIX hacker and
computer scientist, and intended to be the ultimate SCM tool out there.
Aegis is already mature and usable. Peter Miller has been very quiet
about getting contributions to Aegis, which IMO, is a good thing.

2. Subversion - a SCM tool that aimed to be primarily a "better CVS" and
nottoo much more. Under very active development, and in beta stage now.

3. Arch - an SCM package by Tom Lord that is already usable. Lord has
recently requested donations so he can keep working on Arch on his free time.
My suggestion to him is to not be so desperate: work on Arch for fun.

There isn't something inherently wrong with Source-control management
systems that would make them impossible to be developed as open source. But we
need money to hire competent companies and hackers to do the work for us, if
we wish to make the situation quicker. This money would be dedicated to
continuing development of those products, hopefully bringing them more up
to par with the state of the art.

So this call for arms is four-fold:

1. For companies and individuals to donate money.
2. For companies to allocate developers to work on these alternatives.
3. For individuals to invest time in improving those existing tools
bringing them up to par with the state of the art.
4. For hosting services not to pre-assume their users want CVS (or only
CVS) and supply hosting of one or more of the other free alternatives.

A final note: there is no such thing as "1.0" of SCMs. The ultimate Version
Control System is somewhere in infinity. There will always be the 2.0 of SCMs,
as well as the 3.0 etc. Knuth is not God because God has already released TeX
4.0 and is hard at work on version 5. As I noted once, the number of items
on a project's to-do list always grows or remains constant. (and some of
the good Hackers-IL people could find ways to prove it from the second law of
thermodynamics.)

I have started a mailing list to discuss the "Better CVS" initiative and
to post pledges of donations here:

Why bring money into it? I can't recall any free software project of merit begging donations before it got started (or after for that matter).

Subversion and OpenCM are well along the path to usability and are continuing to improve. CVS is good enough for the interim.

If you want want the next generation SCM systems sooner and are unable to assist development, then there are numerous non-development roles that are of immense assistance to projects such as these. Writing documentation, writing regressions tests and even using the software and reporting bugs that you find are all tasks which will get these projects to 1.0 much sooner than vague pleas for cash.

The intention of the project is to concentrate and synchronize efforts, not to create a vapourware. By all means, we will contribute to Subversion, Arch, Aegis, OpenCM, or whatever. Our common enemy is, naturally, BitKeeper, and this is because I don't like Larry McVoy's attitude or his hipocrism.

You state that you don't mind proprietary software yet you call bitkeeper an enemy? Sounds like a "hypocrites who hate proprietary software (but don't look behind that curtain hiding the windows box) club."

I think this effort is misguided (like every other "begging for money" effort) and you (shlomif) and the projects will be better off if you contribute code, instead of advogato articles. It will increase the advogato S2N ration, too.

What are you going to do with $20 million? Atria developed the original ClearCase for vastly less than that; the millions they spent were mainly on marketing and distribution, expenses not needed for a free software project.

If you're intent on throwing money at the problem, you only really need enough to allow one dedicated person with the right skills to work full time. Divide your target amount by at least 200. Since the FSF is unhappy with the BitKeeper situation, then perhaps you could work with them to fund the creation of something that is clearly superior, so that the pragmatists can be won back to using free software.

I always wince when I see somebody start a discussion with "Ayn Rand said ..." :-) But this article is more amusing than offensive. I'm chuckling at the thought of what she would have thought of a plan that begins with "first, everybody has to donate their time and money" to a person who doesn't particularly have a plan, nor any technical credentials, but who thinks that they have a unique insight and everybody ought to follow them. Really, come on: that's almost exactly the kind of bullshit that Atlas Shrugged harpoons. I can't think of an approach that is more opposed to both Objectivism and the free software way of doing things.

As other people have said, you need to come up with code, or at least a design, if you want to be taken seriously.

Larry is way off when he quotes that it takes $12 million to create a version control system. And $20 million is definitely way too much.

Take the standard rule of thumb for an employee: $10,000/month. Now let's say that you've got six people working on the system for three years. That is just $2.2 million dollars.

How many people? How long? Hard to say. Subversion has got three dedicated developers plus (say) 1 full-time equivalent from all the developers in the community. It has been in development for a bit over two years.

Asking for donations/cash? Nah. It is much better to contribute actual developers, documentors, testers, etc.

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